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Shadow Tag (Paperback)

July 2011 Indie Next List

“Knowing her unstable husband has been reading her diary, a desperate woman uses it to manipulate him, creating a false tale, obscuring her true motives, and pushing him ever-closer to the edge. Shadow Tag is Erdrich's most compelling novel in years; a gripping portrait of an unstable marriage stumbling towards its inevitable, yet shocking dissolution.”
— Rich Rennicks, Malaprop's Bookstore/Cafe, Asheville, NC

February 2010 Indie Next List

“Knowing her unstable husband has been reading her diary, a desperate woman uses it to manipulate him, creating a false tale, obscuring her true motives, and pushing him ever-closer to the edge. Shadow Tag is Erdrich's most compelling novel in years; a gripping portrait of an unstable marriage stumbling towards its inevitable, yet shocking dissolution.”
— Rich Rennicks, Malaprop's Bookstore/Cafe, Asheville, NC

Description

"Here is the most telling fact: you wish to possess me.

Here is another fact: I loved you and let you think you could."

When Irene America discovers that her husband, Gil, has been reading her diary, she begins a secret Blue Notebook, stashed securely in a safe-deposit box. There she records the truth about her life and her marriage, while turning her Red Diaryhidden where Gil will find itinto a manipulative farce. Alternating between these two records, complemented by unflinching third-person narration, Shadow Tag is an eerily gripping read.

When the novel opens, Irene is resuming work on her doctoral thesis about George Catlin, the nineteenth-century painter whose Native American subjects often regarded his portraits with suspicious wonder. Gil, who gained notoriety as an artist through his emotionally revealing portraits of his wifework that is adoring, sensual, and humiliating, even shockingrealizes that his fear of losing Irene may force him to create the defining work of his career.

Meanwhile, Irene and Gil fight to keep up appearances for their three children: fourteen-year-old genius Florian, who escapes his family's unraveling with joints and a stolen bottle of wine; Riel, their only daughter, an eleven-year-old feverishly planning to preserve her family, no matter what disaster strikes; and sweet kindergartener Stoney, who was born, his parents come to realize, at the beginning of the end.

As her home increasingly becomes a place of violence and secrets, and she drifts into alcoholism, Irene moves to end her marriage. But her attachment to Gil is filled with shadowy need and delicious ironies. In brilliantly controlled prose, Shadow Tag fearlessly explores the complex nature of love, the fluid boundaries of identity, and one family's struggle for survival and redemption.

About the Author

Louise Erdrich is the author of thirteen novels as well as volumes of poetry, short stories, children's books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her novel Love Medicine won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse was a finalist for the National Book Award. Most recently, The Plague of Doves won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Erdrich lives in Minnesota and is the owner of Birchbark Books, an independent bookstore that provides a locus for Native intellectual life and exists to nourish and build a community based on books, with a special emphasis on Native American titles. She is an enrolled Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa (a tribe of Ojibwa and Metis peoples).

Praise For…

“A portrait of an ‘iconic’ marriage on its way to dissolution…Erdrich’s unbridled urgency yields startlingly original phrasing as well as flashes of blinding lucidity.” -New York Times Book Review

“Gripping…a hushed and haunting tale that chillingly and convincingly reflects the upper-middle-class American experience, not only the Native American one.” -USA Today

“ A fierce novel…raw…alive…vividly present…it marks a breakthrough for the author.” -Columbus Dispatch

“Read this if: You’re looking for a well-written, well-told tale that is thought- and discussion- provoking.” -Baltimore Sun

“A page-turner…a most compelling novel” -Dallas Morning News

“SHADOW TAG is hard to put down...It builds to a spectacular ending with a twist I didn’t see coming...Erdrich has taken a tragedy and turned it into art.” -Philadelphia Inquirer

“A domestic drama that builds an almost thriller-like momentum…A novel as dark and tragic as it is difficult to put down” -San Diego Union-Tribune

Clear, urgent, deep as a swift river…accomplishes the literary miracle of making a reader ravenous to finish it, while stinging with regret at how soon it must end.” -San Francisco Chronicle

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